The International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Invention
Volume 1 issue 5 2014 page no.301-311 ISSN: 2349-2031
Available Online At: http://valleyinternational.net/index.php/our-jou/theijsshi
Internal Social Conflict within the Characters in Arthur Miller’s
All My Sons
Dr.Ashok B. Yawale
Asstt.Professor,Arts,Comm.& Sci. College,Maregaon Dist-Yavatmal
Email [email protected]
Abstract: Produced by Harold Clurman, Walter Fried and Elia Kazan, and directed by the latter, “All My
Sons” began the first of 328 performances at the Coronet Theatre in New York on the evening of January 29,
1947. The play registered its impact in the American theatre. The audience were impressed with the seriousness
and intelligence of the work. The play proceeds from the guilt of Joe Keller, uneducated, a small factory owner
who sold cracked cylinders’ heads to the Army, Air Force during the period of Second World War. It caused the
death of twenty one American pilots. His elder son Lary, a pilot, was also reported missing during the war. The
fact that Lary committed suicide because of the sense of shame and outrage over Joe’s crime is withheld till the
very end of the play. Joe managed to escape a long prison term by manoeuvring his business partner Steve
Deever taking the blame. Joe returned to his business, rebuilt it and by the time the war is over, operating it
successfully. When the play opens we are introduced to the leisurely Sunday atmosphere of Keller’s family life.
Chris, the younger son wants to marry Ann, the fiancée of his dead brother Lary. Mrs Keller is against their
marriage because she refuses to believe that Larry is dead. As the play proceeds, the playwright lifts the veil on
the events of the past, leading to an implacable exposure of the main character and the social philosophy that
he represents.
draft of the play Kate Keller, a wife of Joe, is the
Introduction:
dominant character and there is a great stress on
Act I of the play gradually prepares its characters
her belief in astrology. Keller and son worry about
for the catastrophe that will follow. In the earlier
how she will respond to the destruction of the tree,
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: I’ve been a good son too long, a good
the family planted in tribute to Larry. Though
Chris
Miller later shifted the main focus to the father
sucker. I’m through with it.
son relationship, Kate remains a dominating
Keller: You’ve got a business here, what the Hell
personality. As play proceeds we see Kate’s
is this?
obsession only deepens when Larry’s girlfriend
Chris
Annie, returns for a visit at Chris’s invitation; she
inspire me.
strenuously opposes an alliance between her
Keller : Must you be inspired?
second son and the woman, she still perceives as
Chris : Yes, I like it an hour a day. If I have to
‘Larry’s girl’, we also get our first focus on two
grub for money all day long at
very
of
least at evening I want it beautiful I want the
relationship between Joe and Chris, and difference
family, I want some kids, I want to build
between their attitude to the family business. Joe
something I can give myself to. Anne is in the
is intensely possessive toward his business. He
middle of that. Now… where do I find it?Keller:
does not view the factory as an end in itself, but as
You mean – (Goes to him) tell me something, you
the means by which he can enable his son to make
mean you’d leave the business? Chris : Yes. On
the best possible life for himself. But Chris is
this I would.
different in attitude to life:
Keller : (after a pause) well…you don’t want to
Chris … I’d hoped that if I wanted, Mother would
Think like that?
forget Larry and then we’d have a regular
Chris : Then help me stay here.
wedding and everything happy. But if that can’t
Keller : All right, but – but don’t think like that.
happen here, Then I’ll have to get out!
Because what the hell did I work for. That’s only
Keller: What the hell is this?
for you, Chris, the whole shootin’ match is for you
Chris : I’ll get out I’ll get married and live
Chris : I know that, Dad. Just you help me Stay
Some place else. May be in New York.
here.1
important
Keller :
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points;
the
Are you crazy?
closeness
: The business! – The business doesn’t
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Joe Keller is pre-occupied with the world of inner
of the George, Ann’s brother, will also be coming
circle of family and family business. The outer
to visit. The first act ends with ominous tension
world for him is a blur, and he is unable to
between Joe Keller and his wife Kate and with her
understand a complex result or what he considered
cryptic warning to him to ‘be smart’.
the private act. He is short sighted. And this is
Arrival of George begins the weakening of several
why he can honestly refer to the deaths of twentyof the strands, for it prompts Sue, a neighbour, to
one pilots as a ‘mistake’. Passionately attached to
the family, Joe Keller appears to behave for the
speak contemptuously to all of Chris’ ‘phoney
idealism’ and it reveals the restoration of George’s
prosperity of his business and consequently for the
belief in his father. Chris is an idealist but
bright future of his family and only remaining son.
sincerely felt and his idealism is tinged with a
In the inner circle of the family he did not commit
hollowness that an unsympathetic neighbour
a crime, and consequently the guilt he feels does
labels hypocrisy. The wife of physician whom
not involve the twenty one fliers early as much as
Chris has been urging to abandon a lucrative
it does the man whom he allowed to take all the
practice for research career, she pours out her
blame for the ‘mistake’. Both the fathers, Willy
resentment to Ann:
Loman in ‘Death of a Salesman’ and Joe Keller
are egocentric. Although to a degree each father
Every-body knows Joe pulled a fast one to get out
egocentrically
personal
of jail… I have got nothing against Joe. But if
immortality through his sons, overtly his life for
Chris wants people to put on the hair shirt, let him
his family has been the driving force and
take off his broadcloth. He is driving my husband
justification of his life.
crazy with that phony idealism of his.2
The drama unveils like stretched tightly written
Chris’s idealism is not phoney it just eludes its
mystery story. Keller’s family life is disturbed by
spokesman. He after all, is attached to his parents,
the arrival of Ann and then by the announcement
and his love for his father is particularly intense.
seeking
a
kind
of
He is an heir to his parent’s principles and
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morality, yet he is an honest man and an idealist.
me now ? As long as you live, that boy is alive.
He can believe only in the purity of his father’s
God does not let a son be killed by his father.”3
behaviour. With his parents, he had joined in the
Miller tries to weld two themes together through
lie though clearly without any awareness that he is
Kate.
doing so.
It has become common place of criticism to link
George’s arrival changes the tone of the play. He
‘All My Sons’ with Henrik Ibsen, a Norwegian
himself is a lawyer, a man who should see clearly
playwright, to whom Miller indebted much.
the difference between right and wrong but who
Miller’s play is carefully structured and tightly
has himself been duped for years too ready to
plotted like most of the Ibsen’s plays. Miller
accept Joe’s story. Kate works at George’s sense
himself in his book ‘Introduction To The
of nostalgia. Relaxed, George confesses he never
Collected Plays’ believes “the shadow of Ibsen
felt at home anywhere but there. During the talk
was seen on this play for another reason, and it is
of childhood experience George comes to know
of that ‘All My Sons’ begins very late in its story.’
the alleged illness that kept him from the plant on
Miller has obviously learned from Ibsen how to
the day the defective cylinders heads came off the
withhold information about the past until it is
line. As Kate, endorsing her husband’s pride in his
most useful dramatically, and how to create a
good health, speaks the fatal line; ‘He hasn’t been
sense of an inexorable web of cause and effect.
laid up in fifteen years’. George, now, with full of
Generally it is in the Ibsen’s dramas that the
anger asks Ann to leave and not to marry Chris,
themes of the sin of the parents visited on the
but Ann joins Chris in telling her brother to go.
children, and of the house built on a lie, are also
Very next to this, in the quarrel between Kate and
relevant to ‘All My Sons’. A noticeable feature of
Chris that ensues, Kate finally reveals the truth :
the plot mechanism in this play is the leisurely
“Your brother’s alive, darling, because if he’s
introduction, and the slow building up. In the true
dead, your father killed him. Do you understand
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manner of an Ibsenesque well-made play, it
“The fortress which ‘All My Sons’ lays siege to is
begins at a late point of action.
the fortress of unrelatedness”4, Miller wrote while
explaining the didactic design of his play in his
In the plot pattern of the play, the over-importance
‘Introduction’
to
‘Collected
Plays’.
attached to the element of intrigue resulting from
Chris’s decision to Marry Ann tends to obscure
the rising line of tragic action. Kate’s neurotic
‘Unrelatedness’ is a telling epithet to describe
Joe’s illness which was the most important and
influential part of his crime against society.
insistence that Larry is alive and he will return to
claim Ann, and Ann is “Larry’s girl” creates
Although Keller’s crime is the supply of defective
cylinders to the government, this crime is the
obscurity in the unveiling of the main theme. No
consequence
of
the
pervasive
illness
of
doubt Kate adds very little to the basic thrust of
unrelatedness. And in the play, Chris himself hurls
the play. Her insistence that Larry is alive is a
against this barrier of unrelatedness. Joe acted
source of the conflict in the play. Her slip of the
within
the
confines
of
his
family-based
tongue makes George aware of Joe’s guilt and
philosophy of life; his crime was quite in
brings about the turning point in the action. Her
conformity with this unauthentic and unexamined
obstinacy compels Ann to reveal the secret of
Larry’s last letter, thus forcing the plot to its
mode of life which is unsettled by queer turn of
events in the play. Joe believed that family loyalty
climax and conclusion.
should have priority over everything else, he took
The tragic irony of the play is that Joe’s crime
chance for the sake of Chris. But Chris’s sense of
against outside world eventually becomes a crime
moral responsibility unlike his father’s, extends
against his own family and in destroying those to
beyond the personal, beyond the family to the
whom he considers himself unrelated, he finally
larger family, the world outside. When Chris
destroys those to whom he is most intensely
confronts him with a direct accusation, Joe’s
bound.
apologia merges the business ethic of survival into
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his love for his son. He begs his son to understand
what could I do? (He sits on bench) Chris
his reasons;
…Chris, I did it for yous… for you.5
Keller :
You’re a boy, what could I do I’m
in business, a man is in business; a hundred and
In Joe’s eyes there is nothing bigger than the
family. Miller’s themes, whether harsh or tender,
twenty cracked, you’reout of business; you got a
are always dramatized and transmulated into his
process, the process don’t work you’re out of
plays with the emotional dimension and psychic
business; you don’t know how to operate, your
stuff is no good; they close you up, they tear up
depth of human relationships. The ‘ontological
weakness’ of striving for substantial human
your contracts, what the hell’s it to them? You lay
relationship is sure sign of hope and ray of
forty years into a business and they knock you out
sunshine in the midst of a predatory, dismal and
in five minutes, what could I do, let them take
highly materialistic society. When Miller does not
forty years, let them take my life away (His voice
see any possibility of escape for his characters,
cracking) I never thought they’d install them. I
from a life of exploitation, injustice, cruelty and
swear to God. I thought they’d stop ‘em before
unhappiness, he adopts a compromising attitude
anybody took off.
and points at ‘hopeless hope’ by projecting them
Chris: Then why’d you ship them out ?
into human relationship patterns and this become
Keller: By the time they could spot them I thought
the basis of his existence. Miller is definitely a
I’d have the process going again, and I could
social critic with strong moral vision.
show them they needed me and they’d let it go by.
But weeks passed and I got no kick-back, so I was
Chris is an idealist, the individual who is his
going to tell them.
father’s antagonist. We see the conflict between
Chris: Then why didn’t you tell them?
Chris’s idealistic attitude and his father Joe’s
Keller : It was too late. The paper, it was all over
short-sightedness and unrelated attitude towards
the front page, twenty-one went down, it was too
society, in the play. Miller has featured love and
late. They came with handcuffs into the shop,
hate between the grownup child and the parent, in
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the every major play, except ‘The Crucible’ and
they’d‘ve been here today. And I got an idea---
‘Incident at Vichy’. In the ‘Shadows of the Gods’
watching them go down. Everything was being
a lecture he gave before the New Dramatists
destroyed, see, but it seemed to me that one new
Committee and published in “Harpers”, Miller
thing was made. A kind of ---responsibility. Man
pointed to the movement of revolt against the
for man. You understand me?--- To show that, to
parent as the starting point of individual
bring that onto the earth again like somekind of
development. “We are formed in this world when
monument and everyone would feel it standing
we are sons and daughters and the first truths we
there, behind him, and it would make a difference
know throw us into conflict with our fathers and
to him. (Pause). And then I came home and it was
mothers”. In ‘All My Sons’ the love between the
incredible. I- there was no meaning in it here; the
generations is both more prominent and more
whole thing to them was a kind of bus accident. I
convincing than the love between Chris and Ann
went to work with Dad, and that retrace again. I
which is rather tamely written, and Chris’s love
felt what you said – ashamed somehow. Because
for the soldiers who serve under him in the war,
nobody was changed at all. It seemed to make
which is rather overwritten. It is an idealism
sackers out of a lot of guys. I felt wrong to be
contained in his explanation to Ann of what the
alive, to open the bank book, to drive the new car,
war has meant to him.
to see the new refrigerator. I mean you can take
Chris:
Because they weren’t just, men. For
instance, one time it’d been raining several days
those things out of a war, but when you drive that
car you’ve got to know that it came out of the love
a man can have for a man, you’ve to be a little
and this kid came to me, and gave me his last pair
of dry socks. Put them in my pocket. That’s only a
little things – but… that’s the kind of guys I had.
because of that. Otherwise what you have is really
loot, and there is blood on it.6
They didn’t die : they killed themselves for each
This is too obviously a direct statement of
other. I mean that exactly; a little more selfish and
something Miller felt. ‘He felt it deeply and
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sincerely, Ronald Hayman7, comments ‘but the
Raymond Williams8 has noted that Joe Keller’s
sentiment, though certainly relevant to the drama,
alienated consciousness is essentially derived
is not sufficiently dramatized”. The seeds of the
from the false values of his society. In ‘All My
impending conflict between Joe and Chris are
Sons’, as in “Death of a Salesman”, Miller
anticipated in Ann’s outburst against her father,
condemns commercial society with its worship of
who is in prison. Surprisingly for Ann, Joe makes
strange Gods.
light of her father’s crime, in his view he is a fool,
a man prone to mistake but not a murderer. As
After revelation of father’s guilt, Chris continually
up to the end of the play hammers at Joe’s
against this, Chris is drawn as a person with a
unrelatedness. Now Joe realizes that, despite his
tender conscience, as preceding opinion reveals,
desperate efforts to hold it together his family is
he has known life in a manner, his father could
beginning to disintegrate, and even when Kate
never understand. Having seen what war was like,
tries to explain that for Chris there is something
and how people died for others, his life with his
bigger than the family, Joe still can not
father with bankbooks, refrigerators and cars
understand. His comments in the last Act, at the
produces guilty feeling in him. Money appears to
final moment of the life illustrates his growing
him like ‘loot’ and ‘covered with blood’. This
uncertainty and despair. In bewilderment he asks
contrasting attitude to moneymaking and the
Chris :
resultant social attitudes provide the basis for the
Keller: Exactly what’s the matter? What’s the
conflict in the play.
matter? You got too much money? Is that what
There is little doubt that Joe Keller’s values are
bothers you? You think I am kidding… well, talk
derived from his social environment, and that his
to me what you want to do!
crime had its roots in the dog- eating-dog morality
Chris : It’s not what I want to do. It’s what you
of American Capitalism. In a brilliant study of the
want to do.
realistic social vision in Miller’s tragedies,
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Keller :
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What I should I want to do ? Jail?
Several critics have pondered over the abruptness
You want me to go to Jail ? Is that where I
of Joe’s conversion, by the manner in which
belong? What’s the matter? Why can’t you tell
Miller has shown him over-throwing sixty years
me…9
of thinking and feeling in a minute. Edward Murry
who shrewdly remarked that there is a shift of
While these efforts to find a logical reason, do not
serve as an excuse for Joe’s criminal deed, they do
dramatic focus from Joe to Chris in Act Three as a
result of which Joe’s movement towards suicide is
open up an angle to the underlying horror of the
play. Finally, the revelation of Larry’s letter, by
Ann, brings on catastrophic situation. Joe’s strong
wish about Larry that if he was alive ‘he wouldn’t
act like this’ breaks violently into pieces. In the
not made dramatically credible.11 C. W. E. Bigsby
has also criticized Miller for his failure to
dramatize Joe’s final statement that “they were all
my sons”.
last moment of his life he is totally isolated from
The playwright has provided a little symbolic
the family and the community. The man who
detail of the character and philosophy of Joe
asked everyone for answers comes to realize that
Keller. He is characterized by simple geniality and
he can only supply the ultimate ones. It is moral
naive high spirits. He is presented as an ordinary
condemnation from his other son, who crashed his
man surprised that, ‘every week a new book
plane out of shame that drives Joe to a change of
comes out”. Miller has done everything possible
heart. He says he will give himself up to the
to emphasize the ordinariness of his protagonist
police. Despite Kate’s attempt to convince him
through his drab speech. It is precisely his
that Larry would never have advocated such a
dullness and incomprehensibility which renders
move, he says, looking at the letter, “Sure, he was
Joe into a fascinating objects of attention when he
my son. But I think to him they were all my sons.
is on trial, and hearing the voice of his doom.
And I guess they were, I guess they were. I’ll be
According to Denis Well, Miller sees Joe as the
right down.10
simple man who has got on by energy and will
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power but who is hardly clever enough to know
that vision behind that anger, that remorse that
how he has done it. He opines that to this extent
pathos that he felt… There is an instant where he
he is another David Friber, a man who had all the
was immediately connected to a social or moral or
luck. He quotes Kate saying “We’re dumb, Chris.
transcendent issue, namely the question of his
Dad and I are stupid people. We don’t know
own emotional attachment to the men he had led
anything. You’ve got to protect us.”12 Keller
in the war…” Watching his comrades die for each
knows he is responsible for the pilot’s death, and
other and for him, he has become aware of a ‘kind
he knows that his neighbours know of his guilt.
of responsibility, Man to man’. From his speeches
Kate, his wife, also shares his knowledge.
in the play we should infer that since then he had
been wavering between a contemptuous rejection
Steve Deever, of course, has been the victim of
the Keller family’s deception, and George has just
of this intolerably unchanging world and a
sentimental urge to find solace in his love for Ann
returned after meeting his father. He suffered from
his father’s disgrace, and was a frustrated
and to settle down eventually. Miller says that the
way it happens to him is unique. Joe Keller,
dreamer. The grim business scandal involving his
finally in the last act, with a moral crisis-whether
father revealed to him something of the human
to confess his complicity or look to Deever as a
operations of a profit seeking business world.
scapegoat, he chooses the later, necessitating a life
Conclusion
of deception afterwards. Once Chris understands
Chris, a stern idealist, wants to be different from
his father. Miller in one of the interview with
Evans13
answers
about
Chris
that
he
by
overlooking his father’s crime, is of the chance to
live a peaceful life without conflict. He would not
have participated in a moral decision of some
kind, but at the same time, he would have lifted
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what his father has done, once he has identified
the heinous consequences of Keller’s having
placed the personal above the social, the final act
moves inexorably toward restitution of the social
order through the offender’s death. The man who
is caught up in this social shaping process loses
his identity and his individuality. Miller is
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variously criticized by many critics, for this play,
as the ‘least original’ and ‘least exploratory in
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REFERENCES
1 Collected Plays “All My Sons” p. 68, 69
theatrical technique, of all his major plays. Since
“All My Sons” critics have typecast him as a
2 Collected Plays “All My Sons” p. 94
3 Collected Plays “All My Sons” p. 114
realistic playwright. But despite that, the play is
4 The Theatre Essays, “Arthur Miller” p. 131
interesting as a preparation for the later plays.
5 Collected Plays “All My Sons” p. 115
6 Collected Plays “All My Sons” p. 85
Though he has been underrated as an innovator of
dramatic form, the fact remains that, after ‘this
7 Ronald Hayman, Arthur Miller (Frederick
Ungar Publishing Co. New York) p. 29.
play Miller was not content to create another
8 Raymond Williams, “The Realism of Arthur
Miller” in Arthur Miller : A Collection of Critical
Essays, ed., R. W. Corrigan p. 73.
realistic play. Speaking in his own defence, the
9 Collected Plays “All My Sons” p. 124,125
playwright notes that ‘Death of a Salesman’ was
10 Collected Plays “All My Sons” p. 126
not, of course in the realistic tradition, having
11 Edward Murrey, Arthur Miller p. 8
broken out into a quite new synthesis of
12 Quoted by Denis Welland Arthur Miller – p.
37 from “All My Sons.”
psychological and social dimensions, and ‘The
13 Evans, Richard I Psychology and Arthur Miller
p. 93
Crucible’ was a work of another tradition
altogether, and so on.”14
311
14 Arthur Miller, Collected Plays Volume – II p. 1